18421

Technology / Re: Britain’s Coal fired power plants facing closure:

« on: 16/12/2013 11:43:15 »

.....which (apart from India) has crumbled even faster since we left. Military dictatorships, tribal wars, general corruption and the occasional famine....whilst Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the West Indies continue to prosper. What's  different about these places?   

18422

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: ever lasting light

« on: 16/12/2013 00:28:01 »

I originally worked it out electically and then started looking for known laws of nature to describe what was happening, hit upon thermodynamics and it's correct a hot body does bend light away from it.

Please show your working.

18423

That CAN'T be true! / Re: Breakthrough in sustainable renewable energy?

« on: 16/12/2013 00:25:23 »

Crap. You can generate a reasonable vacuum by modifying a bicycle pump.

18424

That CAN'T be true! / Re: Breakthrough in sustainable renewable energy?

« on: 16/12/2013 00:20:35 »

Instead of sinking huge quantities of capital into a fullsize device, why not build a scale model to convince your potential backers that you can set aside the laws of physics? 

Then nobody will delete your post, or even take issue with it.

Engineering is about realising our dreams, so instead of "imagining a 150 kg counterweight..." why not just build a little Meccano model with a 1.5 kg weight? 

18425

Technology / Re: Britain’s Coal fired power plants facing closure:

« on: 16/12/2013 00:16:49 »

Just shows what can be done if you have a functioning coal industry, then. With massive quantities of cheap native energy, and unfettered by democracy or human rights, you can build hydroelectric dams and nuclear power stations any damn where you like.   

18426

Just Chat! / Re: How does the military and war reflect on human intellect?

« on: 15/12/2013 23:51:18 »

The Falklands War is one of those events that would be hard to satirize. (Has any one ever made a film about it?)

I saw an interesting TV interview with one Major Chris Keeble. He described the final stage of the British attack on Goose Green IIRC thus:

"As dawn rose I realised that we were lying in a meadow with as much cover as a billiard table. My commanding officer was dead and one third of my men were dead or injured. We were beyond the reach of naval artillery, with no vehicles, no supply chain, and no contact with air support. Our enemy, who outnumbered and outgunned us five to one, were dug into a village where they had been for six weeks. Having no alternative, I invited the Argentine commander to surrender, which he promptly did." 

You can't write satire better than the truth.

So here's the conundrum of human intellect. Real men with balls and brains are sent to fight for no purpose by cowardly politicians with no talent whatever. Fortunately, just once in a while, common sense prevails on the battlefield, but such moments are rare. 

18427

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: christmas trees

« on: 15/12/2013 23:28:25 »

Bourbon is the only thing worth adding to any sort of water.

Or is "christmas tree water" a polite name for Labatt's fizzy piddle?   

18428

Technology / Re: Britain’s Coal fired power plants facing closure:

« on: 15/12/2013 23:22:48 »

Nothing wrong with CO2. It's essential for plant growth and therefore life on the earth's surface.

The most sensible thing to do with coal is to distil the higher tars, whcih are useful chemical feedstocks, and burn the coke at high temperature to produce electricity.

The most pointless thing to do with coal is to close the coalmines (which cannot be reopened if they are not maintained) and put a tax on carbon emissions. The result is clear to see - industry moves to those corrupt and backward nations that still use coal and the most enlightened civilisation the world has ever known is bankrupted and extinguished.   

18429

Technology / Re: Britain’s Coal fired power plants facing closure:

« on: 15/12/2013 20:53:34 »

The famous London smogs predated electricity production and had nothing whatever to do with coalfired power stations. They were caused by burning coal at low temperatures in domestic fireplaces, inefficient industrial furnaces (remember "industry"? we used to make all sorts of things in Britain, my children) and steam locomotives.

The Clean Air Act 1956 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. It was in effect until 1964, and sponsored by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in England and the Department of Health for Scotland.

The Act introduced a number of measures to reduce air pollution, especially by introducing 'smoke control areas' in some towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burnt. By shifting homes' sources of heat towards cleaner coals, electricity, and gas, it reduced the amount of smoke pollution and sulphur dioxide from household fires.

and until the late Sixities, all that electricity, and gas was made from...coal!

My father was tasked to photograph London from the air during one particularly impressive smog, in order to show how polluting the power stations were. It turned out that only surface features visible from 5000 ft were the power stations, which dispersed the water fog and blew almost smokeless exhaust gas up to about 60,000 ft.   

But who cares about mere scientific facts? The EU has sided with the ecofascists, and you must pay.

18430

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Does an electrical discharge alter photon paths?

« on: 14/12/2013 13:23:27 »

Challenge accepted, subject to two conditions:

1. Mutually agreed definition of "electrical discharge"

2. Mutually agreed value of "zero" i.e. the minimum deflection to be detected (or not) to claim the prize.

18431

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: ever lasting light

« on: 13/12/2013 23:25:10 »

Schlieren (from German; singular "Schliere", meaning "streak") are optical inhomogeneities in transparent material not necessarily visible to the human eye.

Schlieren imaging is used to show, among other things,  variations in refractive index in gases. It's particularly useful in wind tunnels but also good fun for demonstrating convection currents in air. Which is what you have done.

18432

Just Chat! / Re: How does the military and war reflect on human intellect?

« on: 13/12/2013 16:36:34 »

Drifting way off topic, and I'll probably be modded for it, but recent military adventures, at least from the UK, have been initiated by politicians who stood an even chance of losing the next election. The Falklands war was a particularly interesting exercise in cynicism on both sides - an unpopular president and prime minister, both desperate for a political breakthrough, both rallied the patriotic spirit by starting a war over a tiny bit of land with no strategic or economic value. Whatever the outcome, one of them was bound to win the next election, and thus it came to pass.

What Galtieri needed was something that would unite the country behind him, take the sting out of the calls for reform and play on the traditional patriotism of the Argentinean people. The ownership of the Falkland Islands had always been an issue in Argentina – a successful taking of the islands would, so Galtieri gambled, unite and rally everyone behind him. So it proved to be.

All of which would have been no more than a curious footnote in history had Tony Blair not followed in his idol's footsteps and declared war on Iraq for no good reason except to raise his personal profile and divert attention from a failed home policy and general governmental incompetence. It was such an effective tactic that George W ignored his father's wise advice and hiked up his approval rating by 40 points declaring "war on terror" (despite the complete absence of meaning or policy in that phrase) and again raised it by 10 points by invading Iraq.

 

18433

Chemistry / Re: Why not break down excess carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen?

« on: 12/12/2013 19:33:09 »

A shipwreck deposits iron at the bottom of the sea where it is dark, and as a big insoluble lump.

Some ships sunk by gunfire or icebergs end up deep in the ocean, but the majority of wrecks and targets are in shallow coastal waters.

18434

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: ever lasting light

« on: 12/12/2013 19:29:56 »

As has been pointed out in this discussion, an electromagnetic wave disperses as it travels, and photons undergo a gravitational red shift in travelling through the universe. Current theory seems to be consistent with observation. However your light bulb and laser experiment seems to me to be more like a Schlieren effect. 

18435

Chemistry / Re: Why not break down excess carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen?

« on: 12/12/2013 18:10:18 »

100 tonnes of FeSO4 in the Pacific? What on earth is the point of that? Every shipwreck deposits thousands of tons of iron in the sea (about 5,000,000 tonnes of Japanese merchant ships alone were sunk in the Pacific during WWII)  and every major river carries tons of the stuff into the sea every day. Probably 100 tons of meteoritic iron falls in the Pacific each day.

Or was the Press report several orders of magnitude too low?

Where's the science - or even common sense - in this?

18436

Just Chat! / Re: WHY do you like science?

« on: 12/12/2013 11:49:51 »

Why do I do it? To find out how things work (i.e. curiosity), and more often why they don't (i.e. profit - engineers and doctors will pay a lot for the answer!).

Why science? Because not all the answers are in the textbook, guesswork can kill you, and prayer is a waste of breath.

Why do I like it? Because it is humanity's only defence against the dogmas and idiocies that would otherwise make life intolerable.

18437

The Environment / Re: What is ball lightning?

« on: 12/12/2013 11:45:43 »

I've seen ball lightning, just twice,  and flown the Met Office's Rare Phenomena expert into a thundercloud in the hope of filming it (no luck, but what an adventure!) and AFAIK it remains a mystery.

St Elmo's Fire is much more common - it's a discharge around sharp objects, usually depicted on ships' rigging and masts but sometimes seen on aircraft. Rarely seen on land because of the proximity of other grounded objects and usually plenty of ambient light, but there are some classic accounts of it appearing on the horns of cattle.

Willo'wisp was, I thought, spontaneously combusting marsh gas.   

18438

That CAN'T be true! / Re: What is free fall?

« on: 12/12/2013 11:32:49 »

Pretty much the point. Once one column has buckled, the weight of the floor around it and all the structure above and outside it will exert a torque on the neighbouring columns  and they will begin to bend. As soon as the next one has gone beyond its elastic limit you will have more floor area exerting torque on the next nearest neighbours....Hence the gentle initial acceleration building to near-free fall.

It's a mistake to think of modern buildings as composed of independently stable parts - the whole structure is only rigid if it retains full integrity. There were several instances of half-built "box girder" bridges collapsing in the Sixties: these structures were brilliant on paper and in the laboratory but only met their design strengths when complete - which by definition doesn't happen on a building site until the last day. And like office blocks, they were also vulnerable to serious weakening through minor damage. We live with stressed-skin aeroplanes and racing cars because they can be inspected easily, withdrawn from service if damaged, and repaired under non-stress conditions, but civil structures can't.   

18439

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: ever lasting light

« on: 12/12/2013 07:53:53 »

I should have mentioned that the energy is lost to it's surroundings by an extremely low frequency electromagnetic wave, the action of thermodynamics is to even out the universes background temperature it wants to make it all equal. I had to do a simple experiment using a laser pen and a light bulb plus some mirrors to convince myself that it was correct. Switching on the light bulb and waiting for it to heat up, the beam did deflect away from it and the mirrors amplified the result. Don't repeat this experiment without using sunglasses it's far to easy to get an unwanted reflection.

Was this experiment done in vacuo or in air?

18440

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Photon coupling, neutrino oscillation and quantum chromodynamics

« on: 12/12/2013 07:49:38 »

A fascinating eclection but

What I propose is a positron/neutrino pairing is at the center of a proton. This creates a magnetic monopole allowing positively charged particles to be attracted to it.  This is bordered by 6 photon/neutrino pairs (quarks).  A pair is on each side of the x, y and z axises.  They resonate, similar to Cooper pairs of electrons along frequencies in the visible light spectrum to maintain the elementary charge of the positron.
    These feed an alternating current which is converted to direct current by the central particle.  This should create a semi-superconducting environment balanced by the electron cloud in the far field of the atom.

implies that an isolated proton is not indefinitely stable. AFAIK it is.